"At any one time there are only seven great dogs"

‘Have you got Game of Thrones on DVD?’ I asked Rachel.  

She shook her head. ‘Can’t you watch it on Sky?’

‘We haven’t got Sky.’ 

She shook her head again, this time in wonderment. ‘Everyone’s got Sky. You’ve got to have Sky.’ 

I shrugged.  ‘Nope.  No Sky. But I do need Game of Thrones.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos I feel the need for some deep fantasy and I can’t watch Lord of the Rings any more, cos it’s getting crazy – I can say all the lines along with the people.’

‘Even the Elvish?’

‘Especially the Elvish.’

‘Hmm, what about Rome?’

‘Seen it.’

‘Liked it?’  We exchanged a glance which said it all.  I mean, what is there about half-naked tough guys with swords that is not to like?

I perused the shelves and came up empty-handed.  Rachel lowered her voice. Even though the house was empty aside from us.  ‘You could always try R’s room.’  R is her daughter, the erstwhile Mistress of All Evil.  ‘She’d kill me,’ Rachel continued. ‘But she wouldn’t mind you looking.’  And that was probably true – the MoAE and I have always had an entente. But, alas, no.  Just Twilight.

And then, just as I was about to go, Rachel thrust a DVD at me and said. ‘Hey, have you seen this?’ 

Dean Spanley.

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s good. Weird but good.  Your kind of weird.’

And last night, I sat by the fire, with a candle burning on the other side, all alone in the house, and watched it.  And it was good.  Cos you know a film is probably going to be good when one of the first lines is ‘Only the closed mind is certain.’

And Young Fisk, the narrator, says: ‘I had supposed certainty to be a good thing – like money in the bank.’  But he comes to realize that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth…  And there are dogs. 

Anyhow, I won’t spoil it. If you haven’t seen it, it’s really rather lovely…even though it's absolutely nothing like Game of Thrones. :-)